Exclusion from Home Care Services in Central and Eastern European Countries: A Focus on Hungary and the Russian Federation

Abstract

AbstractDue to demographic changes all European countries face significant challenges concerning the provision of home and community care for older people. While challenges in organising care services seem to be generally similar, the resources, values and responsibilities are different across countries. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate current knowledge and patterns concerning exclusion from home care services in Central and Eastern European countries, focusing especially on Hungary as a central EU member state and the Russian Federation, as a non-EU Eastern European country. As existing international research typically focuses on Anglo-Saxon contexts, this chapter draws on the national language literature of these two nations as sources of empirical data for the analysis. Our analysis indicates that there is a long-standing risk of exclusion from home care services in both countries, with a need for reform to existing provisions to address this exclusion. Despite this a differential impact of macro-level policy is evident within the two jurisdictions, with some new innovations within the Russian Federation.